Perspective: Who Should Control Obesity… You or the Government?
Today, we are told poor diets lead to the increasing amount of obesity in this country. Moreover, being overweight, which affects about 50% of us and leads to obesity, is alleged to be a major cause for the rapidly increasing medical expense. Since more and more of medical expenses are being paid by the Government through Medicare and Obamacare, and that these programs will go bankrupt in a decade or so, something must be done about obesity. Consequently, it will only be a matter of time until the Government will decide that they must control what we can and cannot eat in order to prevent Medicare and Obamacare from going bankrupt.
The assumption that obesity is a major cause for the forecast financial catastrophe is somewhat dubious in my view for the simple reason that the life expectancy of obese persons is predicted to be shorter than the average healthy American. Financially this means they won’t collect as much Social Security and won’t live long enough to require knee and hip replacements and other expensive treatments for other maladies associated with old age.
But let’s set that aside to consider the question of who is to blame for this obesity problem? There are two new books that have just hit the market that virtually state that it is not our fault that we are obese. One book has the title of Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss It claims that it is the fault of those evil purveyors of processed food. The other entitled Obsessed, by Mika Brzezinski, says these awful processed foods are addicting, and we succumb to them. Since both authors are Progressives, it is not surprising that their answer to this problem is for the government to control what we eat, and Mike Bloomburg, the pseudo Republican Mayor of New York City, surely agrees.
Let’s examine the thesis of Moss’s book Salt, Sugar, Fat. He claims that the food processors aim at what is called the “bliss’ point in the taste and satisfaction of their food product. The actually conduct massive studies involving thousands of persons enrolled in controlled tests to determine just exactly where that bliss point is as measured in precise terms of the amount of salt, sugar and fat in the food. I don’t know about you, but I am astounded to learn this. I thought, naively, that Kraft and General Mills formulated foods to taste just awful!!
I will bet that no one has ever seen an American sitting at a dinner table, at home or a restaurant, reaching for the salt shaker, the butter dish or the sugar bowl to heighten the taste and satisfaction of the food served to them. Or how about this, you are at your grandmother’s house and she serves food that she prepared from scratch that is beyond belief in taste and satisfaction. How did she do this? My grandmother served this to me in the 1930’s. But guess what, she did not even have a cook book. She did it by feel with what magic ingredients? If you had checked her pantry you would have found that she stocked flour, sugar, salt and yes fat. Not butter mind you, but LARD. That’s right, LARD which came straight from the pig they slaughtered on the farm a few weeks ago. Oh, and did I mention that she lived to the ripe old age of 94?
Now, what about the addiction factor, claimed by Mika Brinszki? Well, what do you know, I was addicted to my grandmother’s cooking, and could not wait to visit her in her kitchen. If fact, I would visit her there now were she still able to cook such heavenly meals. And, oh by the way, I notice that we mostly select our favorite breakfast cereal to take home from the grocery store. I wonder why?
Typical of our polically correct society and our propensity to search for the culprit rather than look in the mirror, we have these two authors along with Mayor Bloomberg leading us astray. As Pogo the cartoon Possum would say, “We have met the enemy and he is us!”
So let’s examine us! Research conducted by psychologists at numerous universities reveals that most personal and social problems derive from the failure of self-control. Examples include: compulsive spending and borrowing, under achievement in school, procrastination, alcohol and drug abuse, unhealthy diet, chronic anxiety and explosive anger. Poor self-control correlates with just about every kind of personal trauma including: losing friends, being fired, getting divorced and winding up in prison.” There is no question that the development of self-control is critical in order to have reliable and responsible citizens. Self-control keeps one from being swayed from the right course by evil forces which can come from either outside or inside the person. These forces can include the evil food purveyors who want us to become addicted to their food.
Let’s spend a moment on what is the cause of obesity. This is a simple problem in physics. A person’s body requires a certain amount of nutrients to sustain itself. If the body’s intake of nutrients exceeds this amount, the body stores the nutrients for another day. This stored material is called FAT!!
IN A WORD, IT’S THE CALORIES, STUPID!!
Now, I have no doubt that programs designed to help persons to diet do cause weight loss. The problem is those same persons cannot seem to keep the weight from returning. That is because none of the programs deal with the root cause, namely we lack the WILL POWER to control how much we eat. Each of these programs provides crutches which lead us to believe that there is something magic about their program. But these crutches do nothing to help us develop our will power. So when we toss the crutches aside, we fall right back to where we were.
Reminds me of the preacher who admonished his parishioners to call on the Almighty to cure their aliments. A person at the back of the Church called out that he had just witnessed a miracle. It seemed that there was a cripple on two crutches, who upon hearing the inspiring message, tossed one crutch away and then tossed the other away, as well. The preacher exclaimed that he had to see this man, where is he? Another parishioner called out, he is back here flat on his ass!
We used to believe that self-control was a vital component needed to set a child on the right course, and society spent a large amount of time and money developing moral compasses and self-control in children. This began at virtually the time the child arrived and continued until the child was an adult about eighteen years of age. Beginning in the 1960’s, however, the ideas of a moral conscience and self-control were weakened as society began to celebrate self indulgence. “If it feels good, just do it”. Concurrently, social scientists began to seek the causes for lack of consciences and self-control. They concluded that the causes were poverty, depreciation, failures of the economy, the environment or political influences. In short, the idea was that the individual was not responsible. In fact the individual was a victim. Moreover, we started to believe that we must be careful not to harm a child’s self-esteem, so we rewarded them for nearly anything and everything they did regardless of the quality of the child’s performance.
There is a better book than Moss’s or Brzezinski to help with obesity. It is actually called “Willpower”. This book is chock-a-block full of research data gathered from controlled experiments conducted over the past two or three decades. It breaks willpower into its physiological and psychological components and how to use it. The book combines clearly described scientific experiments, practical advice and a path forward from the morass we find our selves in. Based on their findings, there is hope for our society. It is a must read for parents who have the job of raising the next generation as well as anyone who would like to have more self-control. And it would doubtless help the person trying to control weight.
The government wants to be in every room in our lives, let’s not let them into our dinning room!
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